History of the industrial hemp

history of the industrial hemp

History of industrial hemp in Croatia

In Croatia the industrial hemp has been actively used 60 years ago by producing over 20 000 products out of it (rope, clothes, footwear, oil…) Industrial hemp seeds contain high level of omega-3 acids and a balanced ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, antioxidants, carbohydrates and numerous minerals. Hemp stem has the strongest fibers in the plant world. The industrial hemp was banned in the sixties in the rest of the world while in Croatia has remained legal until the middle of the nineties.

It returns again on 25th September 2019 when the law passed the bill which simplified the cultivation of the industrial hemp to the farmers. Although hemp has been used as food, medicine, energy generating product, building and textile material or animal feed since ancient times, these years it experiences its revival in Croatia.

Yugoslavia was the third hemp export force in the world while Croatia produced the third of the entire quantity. Since 2016 Croatia is in the third place in the world regarding hemp cultivated area. Nowadays there are 90 registrated hemp growers in Croatia.

In the EU it is allowed to grow 50 different hemp sorts. Hemp has been a part of the human civilization for a long time now. It dates 10 000 years in the past which means that cannabis could be one of the first crops people have ever grown.

Industrial hemp was used in Croatia 60 years ago, actively because over 20,000 products could be produced from the plant itself (rope, clothes, shoes, oil,...)
Industrial hemp seeds contain a high level of omega-3 and a healthy ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, antioxidants, proteins and numerous minerals. Hemp stem has the strongest fibers in the plant world. Industrial hemp began to be banned in the world in the 60s, and in Croatia it survived until the mid-90s, after which it completely disappeared.

Cannabis has been used medicinally for thousands of years in Asia, where it was probably first domesticated before traveling to, among other places, Africa. It was almost certainly introduced to the Americas multiple times, first from Africa to South America through the slave trade – in Brazil it is still known by its African name, diamba – but also to the Caribbean. Indian indentured laborers probably brought it to Jamaica, where it is called by its ancient Indian name, ganja.

White Americans also had some history of using cannabis in tinctures. At the beginning of the 19th century, an Irish doctor who worked in India, William Brooke O'Shaughnessy, noticed that cannabis was extensively used in Indian medicine. He began experimenting and found that it was quite effective not only for infantile seizures, but also for rheumatism and spasms caused by tetanus. O'Shaughnessy is usually credited with introducing the plant to the English-speaking world, but although he popularized its use in Britain, he was not the first European to bring it back to Europe. Garcia Da Orta, a Portuguese physician, after living in India, wrote about cannabis as a medicine in the 1500s.

After O’Shaughnessy published his treatises on the plant, its use quickly spread among physicians. By the late 19th century, cannabis was an important part of the pharmacopoeia of British and American physicians. (Researchers suspect that those older varieties of cannabis, and the tinctures made from them, probably contained much less THC and much more CBD than modern varieties.) Of course, hemp, a type of cannabis grown not for consumption, but for the fiber that enters in ropes and sails, among other things, were important crops in Europe and America for centuries. George Washington grew it. The English word “canvas” comes from the Greek word cannabis.

But in the late 19th century, our ancient relationship with this plant began to deteriorate. In 1930, Harry Anslinger, a former Bureau of Prohibition officer, took the new job of running the Bureau of Narcotics. The Mexican Revolution that began in 1910 led to waves of immigrants crossing into the United States. While many Americans took cannabis orally in the form of tinctures, newcomers smoked it, a custom that also spread north from New Orleans and other port cities from which African Americans began their own migration.

Yet when 30 members of the American Medical Association were surveyed, beginning in 1929, 29 disagreed with claims about the dangers posed by cannabis. One said proposals to outlaw it were “absolute rot”. But the hysteria that Anslinger helped set in motion seemed political. In 1937, Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act. High taxes made cannabis much more expensive and difficult to obtain decades before President Nixon—scientists of his day also disagreed with him about marijuana’s supposed dangers—signed the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The plant has been used medicinally by the thousands year was then driven underground.

History of industrial hemp